Pictured Rocks Lakeshore Trail Pt. 2

The best part of a great trip

Upon leaving Coves the next morning, it pretty quickly became clear that I was about to enter the area with the best rocky highlights of the trip. First there were rock formations in the woods.

Life in the north woods is hard. Summer is short and winter is long, so life tries to find a foothold wherever it can, and hangs on for dear life.

I stumbled into a snowshoe hare that was either wounded or scared $hitless. I’m fairly certain I could have captured him with my bare hands.

Snowshoe hares are a largely northern species, found in boreal and upper montane forests. Their coat turns white in winter to provide camouflage against snow, but in summer they look like any other rabbit. Their range extends into the major mountain ranges of the US as well, including the Rockies as far south as the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico. They also occur in the Appalachians (which was news to me), where they are found in small disjunct populations as far south as the Smokies.

As the trail veered back towards the shoreline, sandstone outcrops became frequent. The sandstone was often in thin layers that created interesting patterns as it was eroded by the endless wave action from Lake Superior.

Wind and rain also have similar effects on land, as some of the nearby trees could attest.

Finally, the “pictured rocks” themselves came into view.

I found an interesting promontory that hung over the lake, but couldn’t muster the courage/stupidity to cross the narrow isthmus of sand. I looked at it for a long while, but kept coming back to….

I found a nice breezy overlook and stopped for a snack of chex mix. A seagull flying overhead spied what I was up to and came to check things out, hoping for crumbs.

I started to encounter two kinds of watercraft- cruise ships and kayaks. The so-called cruise ships are from a tourist business known as Pictured Rocks Cruises. I’d say roughly a dozen of them came by during the day, with their rumbling engines and loudspeakers with guides talking about the sights preceding them.

Two miles into the morning I reached one of the highlights- Spray Falls.

Spray Falls plunges 70 ft. directly into Lake Superior. Further down the trail you cross the creek that feeds it.

On the other side there’s a limited view back towards the falls. The footing here is iffy, and I strongly advise not trying to get a great pic from here.

Further west, the trail passed over some exposed sandstone slabs that were sometimes covered with sand. It was almost like having a beach suspended above the lake.

The buffet of great views was never-ending.

A little over 3.5 miles into the morning I reached another highlight- Chapel Rock.

I think it was right after this that you crossed the stream that drained from Chapel Lake. It seemed to flow straight out of the woods to disappear into the sand.

Chapel Beach has a couple of nice access points. I took advantage of one of them, and ended up taking another snack break while I warmed up in the sun.

I later hunted down the privy in the adjacent Chapel campsite.

It wasn’t long until I reached the yet another outstanding rock formation- Grand Portal.

Next I stumbled onto the best “beach above the beach.” I took a long break here to enjoy the sun and breeze.

Looking back to the east from here, you could see the effect of the waves slowly eroding and undercutting the sandstone- periodic rockfalls. In fact, somewhere in this general vicinity 2 days prior there had been an impressive rockfall that nearly nailed some kayakers.

Link to YouTube video of rockfall

This is a good place to remind everyone that the trail is often literally on the edge of these cliffs. It never felt unsafe, but you definitely don’t want to get lackadaisical. And don’t even think about leaning out over the edge while holding onto a tree. Those trees are rooted in sand and give way easily.

Chipmunks continued to bedevil me.

Next up was Lover’s Leap, possibly the most photographed sight in the entire park.

Here I ran into a super cool older lady who proudly introduced herself as Bernadette. She lives in Florida very close to the Ocala section of the Florida Trail that I hiked in February. We spent about 15 minutes chatting. She comes here every year to hike, and shared a lot of her knowledge of the area with me.

Finally after about 8.5 miles I reached Mosquito Beach. To call it a beach is somewhat misleading. Actually, it’s a gently scalloped area of thin sandstone layers.

I spent a bit of time exploring the “beach” before heading off to select my spot at the nearby campsite, which was adjacent to the aptly-named Mosquito River. The river was only a few inches deep and flowed over more of that layered sandstone, which resulted in some really interesting patterns.

While I was getting water from the river, Willow and Emma crossed the bridge on their way to the next campsite and waved me a final goodbye.

I was fortunate to find a campsite with a makeshift picnic table.

I cooked up a scrumptious chili dinner and then killed time in camp watching a host of frustrated day hikers stumbling around and through the various campsites. Apparently the main Mosquito River trail passes right through the campsites on its way back to a parking area a mile or two away. Like all of the other campsites on this trip, Mosquito River was a maze of interconnecting trails that completely bumfuzzled the day hikers. Luckily for them I happened to know the way out, so I played traffic cop for a while. By the time things quieted down, it was nearly dark and time for sleep.

Day 4: 8.7 miles.

I forgot to mention that I saw two mature bald eagles yesterday to go along with the ospreys that I had seen on a daily basis.

This was the one morning I got up early. Yes, I was that well rested. I took advantage of this to cook up some surprisingly good Mountain House Biscuits and Gravy for breakfast. Packing up took me less than 10 minutes, so I got an early start on the trail.

The kayakers were up early as well.

The woods near Mosquito River were obviously a wildflower hotbed. Some of them still remained late in the season.

I made really fast time, and before I knew it I had covered the 4.5 miles to Miner’s Beach. There was a large parking area there that had bear-proof garbage cans and a porta potty. These are two of a backpacker’s favorite things, because each allows you to offload some weight.

A short paved path led from the parking area to the beach, which was not overly crowded with day visitors. Miner’s Beach had a lot more driftwood than the other beaches, and it seemed to be a thing to stack it up vertically as if in preparation for a bonfire.

The trail followed the somewhat wooded edge of the beach for roughly half a mile. The sand here was quite a slog to walk through. My gaiters did a noble job of keeping sand out of my shoes.

There was a creek that flowed in somewhere along the western side, I think. Miner’s Creek is the outlet for the nearby Miner’s Lake.

The next stop was Miner’s Castle, aka Castle Rock. But in order to get there, you had to tackle the biggest climb of the trip. It was only 300 ft. or so of elevation gain, but I saw it make a 12 year-old boy cry.

Once at the crest the trail leveled out for a short while before reaching the visitor center- the Miner’s Castle observation deck path was road-accessible.

You could tell that there was a crowd of people as well as picnic tables at the information center, which gave me false hope that there might be a store there (think Gatorade) and possibly even real food. But first, I headed right to descend the walkway to the observation deck. It wasn’t a long walk. Miner’s Castle was neat, but I’m not sure it was worthy of all the infrastructure dedicated to it.

I excitedly returned up the path to the visitor center with visions of goodies in my head, but I was to be sorely disappointed. The visitor center was indeed a large and nicely-constructed facility, but it basically amounted to merely 2 restrooms.

I commandeered an empty picnic table and sat down for a snack of trail mix and water. Meanwhile, multiple groups of real picnickers were around me with coolers, and of course nobody offered me a beer. Or any other cold beverage. I wouldn’t have been picky at this point. While I was eating, I watched a small boy mess with the bear-proof garbage can over and over and over. Noisily. I am not ashamed in the least that I laughed when he finally got his hand stuck in it and cried for his mommy.

I packed up and left the crowds to return to the woods. It seemed that I had left the sandy soils behind me for good, to be replaced by stretches of this black sticky mud. I found a living fossil growing out of some of this mud.

Equisetum was once one of the dominant understory plants of the late Paleozoic, but it is much less abundant today, although still widely distributed.

Because of the mud, the trail maintainers had built boardwalks in some of the worst stretches.

Despite their best efforts, it wasn’t enough. Fortunately I was hiking during a relatively dry period. This stretch of trail is notorious for sucking off hikers’ shoes during wetter times.

I almost missed the sign to the Cliffs campsite. Everything else so far on the trail had been marked by posts with signs. Not Cliffs.

The trail to Cliffs was overgrown. In fact, it almost looked abandoned. But eventually it led to a small campsite with a fire ring, privy and 3 separate camping spots. I took campsite #1, again, because that is the king’s campsite. I quickly set up camp and set about looking for a water source. There wasn’t one- there was no creek, and there was no access to Lake Superior. It wasn’t called Cliffs for nothing.

The privy was wide open to the world, but nobody else was in camp yet so it didn’t matter. Sadly, there was nastiness on the trail a mere 10 yards from the privy. Some loser couldn’t hold it 10 more yards. There is a special ring of hell for people who have shat on a trail.

The Foxes arrived a little bit later, and I learned from them that for water I had to hike back a quarter mile to a very small creek. So I did what had to be done and returned with 5 liters. I then called the Altran shuttle and was fortunate to be able to arrange a shuttle pick up at Munising Falls the next day at noon. This was a huge relief.

I had a special dinner of turkey with stuffing and mashed sweet potatoes (review to come), and then helped pere Fox gather some firewood for a nice campfire. It did a good job of keeping the mossies at bay. Sundown- hiker midnight- was around 9:30, and that’s about when everyone turned in.

Day 5: 7.3 miles (including side trip for water)

I wasn’t about to risk missing my Altran shuttle, so I was up, fed, packed and on the trail by 8 AM. I only had 5 miles to go, and outside of the mud it was easy trail.

Oh, yeah, about that mud.

After an hour I reached the junction to Sand Point, which was where the Foxes were hiking out to. I thought about dropping down to check it out, but it was steep and I decided the hike back up would have a moderate suck factor, so I continued on.

I kicked up several more deer, one of which you can see (kinda) in the photo below.

For much of the next couple of miles the trail was wide, gently graded and had double duty as a winter cross country ski trail.

As I neared the Munising Falls Visitor Center I saw signage that I didn’t want to see.

I expected worse. The detour took me downhill to the Sand Pt. Rd., from where a short roadwalk to the left brought me to the visitor’s center.

It turned out that this road was in the process of being repaved, which accounted for the Road Closed sign I had encountered on my first day.

I arrived at the visitor center a little after 10 AM. With a lot of time to kill, I browsed their gift shop and bought some stickers for my bear can.

I went back outside to take a nap under a birch tree. As I was falling asleep, I heard a little girl’s voice. “Daddy, is that man a homeless person?” “No sweetie, he just looks like he is. That’s a backpacker.”

I smiled.

By 11:30 I was bored to tears. But at that moment, I heard people shouting at me from a car. I was confused at first, but then I recognized that it was the Foxes. They had swung by on their drive out from Sand Point and saw me. They whipped into the parking lot to bestow a gift- the remnants of some Captain Morgan’s! Finally, at crunch time no less, I manage to yogi some booze. I poured it into an empty SmartWater bottle and thanked them profusely and said goodbye. I then returned to my birch tree and furtively sipped from my bottle. If I was going to look homeless, I was going to act homeless.

Noon arrives, but a shuttle does not. I call them at 12:05 and oops, they forgot me. Luckily, one of their minibuses wasn’t far away and diverted to help me out. A nice lady picked me up at 12:20. She already had a lady onboard who cussed like a sailor. After dropping her off at Beartrap, we headed to Beaver Lake campground to pick up a brother/sister hiker pair and dropped them off at Log Slide. Finally at 1:30 I was back at Grand Sable Visitor Center. I took the advice of my driver and drove 3 miles into the little town of Grand Marais. SCORE!

She had directed me to the Dune Saloon of the Lake Superior Brewing Company.

A waitress quickly appeared and took my order, and over the next hour several beverages might have been consumed.

Yeah, the pizza was pretty good too.

I don’t need to tell you what 5+ days of hiker hunger did to that poor pizza.

The beers, particularly the Puddinstone Wheat, were quite tasty. And had an unexpectedly high ABV.

I waddled out and drove back to Munising, where I got a room at the Pictured Rocks Inn and took a long nap. I went back out after 7 PM in search of the Fish Basket, an allegedly hard to find but worth it local legend.

The address was 231 1/2 E. Superior. That 1/2 should’ve been a clue; it WAS hard to find. I finally found it on the west side of an alley off of Birch St.

Get the fresh local whitefish basket. You won’t be disappointed. Since it was raining, I couldn’t eat at the outside tables and had to retire to their “garage,” which doubles as a sort of restaurant eating area.

Oh, on the way out of town the next morning a wolf ran across the road in front of me.

Day 6: 5.1 miles. Trip Total: 43.8 miles.